Ones preconceived expectation of the Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass would most likely be a sad story of the

horrible life of a 19th century American slave. The story of an illiterate field hand who works on the plantation from sun up to sundown lives in a mud and straw hut, and receives a cruel whipping o n a regular basis from his master. Frederick Douglasss personal account of slavery does include some of these shockingly horrible aspects, but they are not the most important message about slavery that Douglass wants his readers to realize about the peculiar institution. Douglass wants his readers to understand that the real evil of slavery is its robbing of a mans liberty and the ever present want of Freedom. He tells of the imp octant impact his learning to read and write had on his ability to gain his freedom, but also of the newly acquired burden of the knowledge of freedom. I would at times feel that learning to read had been a curse rather than a blessing. It had given me a view of my wretched condition, without the remedy. Douglass sees med to be consumed during most of his slavery by the desire to escape his bondage In coming to a fixed determination to run away, we did more than Patrick Henry, when he resolved upon liberty or death. With us it was a doubtful liberty at most, and almost certain death if we failed. For my part, I should prefer death to hopeless bondage. Even at the point of relative comfortableness when Douglass lived on his own, he yearned to escape to the freedom of the north. He worked in the Baltimore shipyards as a caulker, came and went as he pleased, and even had some leisure time. This semblance of liberty that he seemed to have would be washed away at the end of each week. I was now getting, as I have said, one dollar and fifty cents per day. I contracted for it; I earned it; it was paid to me; it was rightfully my own; yet, upon each returning Saturday night, I was compelled to deliver every cent of that money to Master Hugh. And why? Not because he earned it, - not because he had any hand in earning it, - not because I owed it to him, - nor because he possessed

the slight shadow of a right to it; but solely because he had the power to comp el me to give it up. The right of the grim-visage pirate upon the high seas is exactly the same Douglass does offer up some very horrific stories of slavery; his first witnessing of whipping is extremely vivid. He describes the odd relationship his aunt H ester has with his master, implying one of a jealous sexual nature Why master was so careful of her may be safely left to conjecture. Often the masters jealous y turned to rage, and the rage turned to the whip. and soon the warm, red blood (amid heartrending shrieks from her, and horrid oaths from him) came dripping to the floor. I was so terrified and horror-stricken at the sight, that I hid myself in a closet, and dared not venture out till long after the bloody transaction was over. In Chapter 8 Douglass details the abandonment of his grandmother by her master i n her old age. Left out in the woods to fend for herself - She gropes her way, in the darkness of age for drink of water. Instead of the voices of her children, she hears by day the moans of the dove and by night the screams of the hideous owl. All is gloom. The grave is at the door. I found one of the most remarkable aspects of the Narrative to be Douglasss condemnation of religion. He questions in several places that a just, divine being must not exist for how would he allow such evil to happen. He talks about how religion is used as a cover for justifying evil actions a dark shelter under, which the darkest, foulest, grossest, and most infernal deeds of slaveholders find the strongest protection. Douglass not only found that these men used religion as something to hide behind, but he also found that the more religious a slaveholder was, the worse the man was. For of all slaveholders with whom I have ever met, religious slaveholders are the worst. I have ever found them the meanest and basest, the most cruel and cowardly, of all others.

Douglass comes to realize that slavery, like most institutional human evil, is either sponsored or protected by religion. Later in life, while in New Bedford, Frederick becomes a member of the African Methodist Episcopal Zion church, but l eaves it saying it consented to the same spirit which held my brethren in chains. This all makes the appendix to the Narrative quite perplexing. He adds the appendix as a disclaimer to his negative remarks about religion in the book. Douglass seems to have been compelled to include the appendix to make the book more palatable to the religious abolitionist audience. When Douglass wrote his narrative he owed much of his fame and influence to William Lloyd Garrison. It was Garrison who discovered Douglass and brought him to national attention. Garrison disliked the Constitution and felt it was a pro-slavery document. Douglass adopted Garrisons view of the Constitution and believed abolitionists should take a stance against it by voting or participating in the political process that it created. Douglass felt that the constitution not only protected slavery in the south, but also discouraged slaves from seeking freedom with its fugitive slave clause. Douglass believed the document was supporting and perpetuating this monstrous system of injustice and blood. Douglass began to question Garrisons disparaging view of the Constitution and asked, Who is right in this contest? and answered so far as the Constitution is concernedall are wrong, since the Constitution is at war with itself. Its actually somewhat ironic that Garrisons interpretation of the Constitution is the same as slaveholders, its a pro-slavery document. Most point to the three-fifths clause as support of the proslavery, and its that clause that causes Douglas s to begin to turn his view of the Constitution from pro-slavery to anti-slavery. Douglass was trying to establish that the three-fifths clause actually robbed the south of representation and weakened their federal power. Douglass was put ting a stronger emphasis on the lost two-fifths as it effected southern representation. Douglass came to realize that Garrisons views and

strategies were impractical and did not fit with his proactive quest to abolish slavery. It was only with an ideological and literal break with Garrison was Frederick Douglass able to reach his great potential in the abolitionist movement.